The great Internet blackout of 2012

Twenty years from now, the children of today may not remember this moment in history, but they might remember watching a LOLcats video on YouTube, or they could recall that fun website, Google, that changed their logo for every holiday. Or if they’re a bit older, they’ll recall the wonderful online encyclopedia that they used to research class projects. But in that distant future, these sites may not exist, if two bills pass in the U.S. House of Representatives in the next few weeks. The Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act, or SOPA and PIPA, as they’re commonly known, were intended to “promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship and innovation,” yet if they pass, they will instead squash the Internet as we know it. So in an unusual turn of events, voices for the Internet are fighting back, hard.

Today, what we’re seeing is truly unprecedented – some of the most popular and powerful sites on the Web displaying black pages and notices arguing against SOPA and PIPA. It’s nothing new to see Congress failing at legislating on the economy, something they supposedly know something about, yet as a collective body, they know even less about technology and as a result, tend to teeter dangerously on the precipice of destructive legislation on a regular basis. That’s where organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation come in, fighting for freedoms and rights online. Unfortunately, sometimes even the most powerful technology civil liberties group can’t combat bills like these on their own.

While Wikipedia raised the most attention before today about plans for “going black,” essentially blocking access to most of their pages (when accessed via browser), other sites have joined in different ways. Google censored their logo in protest, along with posting a petition and information about why they oppose the bills. Craigslist posted a strong statement in opposition, along with a list of action items. Amazon, eBay, Yahoo! and others joined together as part of the Net Coalition, along with technology lawyers in opposition of the bills. Boing Boing removed all of their content from view. Later in the day, Mozilla, the Internet Archive and O’Reilly Media all plan blackouts of their own. These organizations may not be the physical backbone of the Internet, but they are the at the core of its culture. And they’re not alone.

Viewing the outcry online – on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and YouTube – one might think the bills are ultimate doomed, but $94 Million in lobbying fees is no small chunk of change. The MPAA and RIAA who support the bill will not go down without a fight. And unfortunately for the Bay Area, new media is being pitted against mainstream media, including filmmakers in Southern California. In reality, we’re all at risk, including SOPA’s author, Rep. Lamar Smith, for an alleged copyright violation on his website.

The problem in this case is not actually piracy. Everyone agrees piracy is rampant and we all want to find ways of combating it. Neither SOPA nor PIPA will actually solve that problem. As Esther Wojcicki of the Creative Commons explained during last night’s Ideas for a Better Internet Summit at Stanford University, kids will find ways around whatever restrictions or regulations are developed. Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, a highly successful media company bridging from books to blogs, puts it simply: “[t]he solution to piracy must be a market solution, not a government intervention.” SOPA and PIPA threaten security, privacy, creativity, innovation, and economic growth. They are deeply flawed. My own view in opposition comes from over 25 years online as a content creator, computer security engineer, Internet entrepreneur and technology policy advocate.

Now 2012 can be known as the year Congress failed the people, on so many fronts, or it can be the year Congress wakes up. November will be a referendum on the House of Representatives, currently with the lowest approval rating on record. We must kill these bills. And after that, we need to work hard to elect more legislators who truly understand technology, and who will fight for greater openness in politics. If we don’t, we’ll be facing another bad bill in the next Congress. These represent a deeper problem within the fabric of our government.

In this case, while it’s technically very easy to make a simple home page change to add a statement of opposition, coming to that sort of decision is not so easy. This is a serious issue for these organizations, whether they are for-profit or non-profit. Wikipedia will not survive if it’s shackled with the kinds of constraints outlined in SOPA, and it’s quite likely Google would be severely crippled, along with so many other companies that there would be a significant rift in our already fragile economy. All kinds of commerce could come to a halt.

This is indeed “an audacious experiment in political activism,” as Declan McCullagh wrote last night. What we’re seeing today has never been done before. As a result, it’s not without a few hiccups, but ours is an industry that embraces risk. We feed off uncertainty. And as a result, we need not say bye-bye to LOLcats, Boing Boing or Craigslist; there’s plenty of room for the next new thing. Personally, I hope to look back on today as the day where the Internet prevailed. I’ve grown rather fond of it.